Torah Sparks

United Synagogue (USCJ) is proud and delighted to bring you Torah Sparks, with insights and learning materials on the Parasha (Torah portion) of the week. Torah Sparks is produced by the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Each week there will be a Dvar Torah - a discussion on some aspect of the reading, by CY faculty, alumni and friends; a Vort - a short thought from Chasidic rebbes or other thinkers about some point in the text; and Table Talk - questions to stimulate discussion on the Parsha around the Shabbat table. Torah Sparks is available here on the Conservative Yeshiva's Shiurim Online Beit Midrash website, as well as by subscription to weekly graphical emails. Please select the Parasha you would like to see - it will display articles from each year. A printable PDF is linked at the end of each week's presentation.

Ketubot, Chapter 12, Mishnah 2

This mishnah continues to discuss the girl whose mothers husband or husbands promised to support her for five years.

Mishnah Two

1) If she married her husband must supply her with maintenance and they give her the cost of her maintenance.

2) If they die, their daughters are maintained out of their free assets only but she must be maintained even out of assigned property, because she is like a creditor.

3) Clever men used to write, On condition that I shall maintain your daughter for five years while you are with me.

Explanation

Section one: If the daughter, who is receiving maintenance from her mothers husbands, should marry, her husband is obligated to pay for her maintenance, as are husbands in all cases. Nevertheless, this does not relieve her mothers husbands from their obligations. Rather her own husband gives her the food and clothing and other things that she requires and her mothers husbands each pay her the equivalent value of her maintenance.

Section two: If her mothers husbands die, there may arise a situation where she is competing with his daughters for maintenance. [If there are sons, daughters do not inherit but rather are maintained from their fathers estate.] In such a situation, their own daughters receive maintenance only from free assets, property actually in possession of the estate. This is the general rule for those maintained by an estate; they do not repossess property from those to whom the estate holder gave or sold property. In contrast, the husbands actually have a debt to the other daughter, the one with whose mother they cut a deal. Therefore, she may take her maintenance money even from assigned property, property which was sold or given away after the marriage or her mother. Since she is a creditor, she collects from the estate in the same manner as do all creditors.

Section three: By now we have seen that if a man cuts such a deal, he has an absolute debt to this daughter, one which is not mitigated by divorce or his wifes death, his death or by the daughters marriage. Therefore, clever husbands would limit the original stipulation, promising to feed the daughter only as long as the mother was with him. If he wrote the stipulation in such a manner, if he died, or she died or he divorced her, he would no longer be liable.